


MEDITATION

by car_yl



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:42:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26843077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/car_yl/pseuds/car_yl
Summary: One of Karrin's brothers finds Harry in Karrin's house post BG.Follow up to Mourning Murphy
Relationships: Harry Dresden/Karrin Murphy
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27





	MEDITATION

**Author's Note:**

> This is Jim Butcher's universe and I'm just borrowing it.

MEDITATIONS

My name is Kenneth Murphy. I’m a cop. I used to work for CPD but after the way they treated my sister, I decided to take my good reputation and my self-respect and move to a smaller venue. Now I work for the Maine Township PD. It’s still within Chicago proper but it’s more about taking care of friends and neighbors and handing the ‘big stuff’ over to CPD than dealing with monsters and mayhem the way Karrin did.

Yeah, DID. My sister died in the Battle of the Bean. Her significant other told my family about it. He was still a basket case 4 months after she died. It had been hard for him to admit that he’d been there and hadn’t been able to save her. In fact, I think it nearly broke him. But Harry’s tough; just like Karrin was tough. He’s pulling it together, I think. Hadn’t really seen him since mom died about a month ago.

Anyway, l’m a cop. So when I got a call from a neighboring precinct, the one in which my sister’s house sits, that they’d had a report of lights on in her place I headed right over. It was cold weeknight in early December. Snow was threatening. It was late but, this was kind of for Karrin. God, I miss her. Even though she had kept her distance from us the last few years, I missed being able to pick up the phone and harass her about it.

I knew now she’d been trying to protect us from getting tangled up in her run ins with IA; run ins perpetrated by a weasel named Rudolph and whoever was pulling his strings. Well, that’s over now too. Karrin’s dead and Rudolph is among the missing. No need for IA to mess with any of us Murphy’s anymore. Besides Rudy’s latest partner, Bradley, seems to have taken a liking to Harry. No doubt related to the Battle. Harry made a lot of friends and enemies that night.

So anyway, here I was driving through a cold December evening to see who was inside my sister’s house. I’d gotten custody of Mom’s key to Karrin’s place because I lived the closest to her place in Bucktown. So, I’m the one who drives by and checks on the place until Harry decides to do something with it. Karrin had named him executor of her estate. It had been a reciprocal thing. I know she thought of him as her best friend for a decade before she thought of him as anything else. Guess that was reciprocal too.

Poor Harry. He really loved my sister. I think he still does. 

I pulled up and parked just a couple of doors up from her cottage with its dormant rose garden. It had been Grandma’s garden but Karrin had paid to have it maintained in Grandma’s memory, because she, herself, was never much of a gardener. She did like to putter when she could though. Harry had been talking about putting in a garden of useful herbs to compliment the roses. Guess, that’ll never happen now.

There was a shimmer of dim light under the shade in what had been Karrin’s bedroom. It didn’t look bright enough to be a flashlight and the light was steady, flickering but not moving widely. It appeared to be candlelight.

I came up the step quietly and turned my key in the lock. I was quiet as a mouse. The door didn’t squeak and the floor didn’t creak, but out of Karrin’s room I heard a voice call out, “In here, Ken.”

It was Harry’s voice! “Use the candle by the door.” Harry called, “electricity is turned off.”

Yeah, I could believe it. It was as cold inside the house as it was out. I lit the half melted candle with the matches lying on the shelf with the candle in its old-fashioned saucer shaped holder and walked over to the bedroom door. It was partially open. I only had to push it with my fingertips for it to swing wide.

Harry was sitting on the bed cross legged like some yogi wearing nothing but a pair of pajama pants and maybe some boxers. Thank heaven it was dark enough not to get that detail. There was a circle of 5 yellow candles around the bed. The light played over his pale skin making him look the color of fall moonlight; that really pale yellow. He seemed to almost match the color of the candles. I don’t think I’d ever seen Harry without a shirt. I was stunned by the number of scars he had!

Since when did being a PI earn a guy that kind of a roadmap of disaster and near destruction? He had one that ran from just under his collar bone to nearly his navel! Somebody had really tried to take a chunk out of him. And I remember Karrin saying if he seemed a little off we could blame it on the number of concussions he’d collected.

“Um, what are you doing here Harry?” I asked diffidently. I mean, he’s the estate executor and I’m the one who didn’t really have a right to be here. But he had invited me in- well further in.

“Meditating,” Harry said in a voice that sounded like he was far away, as if he were down a tunnel from me.

“How’d you know it was me?” I asked out of curiosity.

“You’re the only one left who has a key,” Well, that was a reasonable explanation.

“Why are you meditating here, Harry?” I had to know.

“I stay here sometimes, since Maggie’s at boarding school and my place is still under renovation.” He hadn’t moved from his Zen-like position. His voice still had that far away sound.

“Why?” I couldn’t help myself. It just seemed odd to me.

“Because **she** ’s here,” Harry answered.

“What?!” My response was much louder in volume than my previous responses.

“Ken, man, you’re pulling me out of my meditation.” Harry opened his eyes and glared at me. Not one of his serious, ‘I’m about to wring your neck’ glares. More one of his, ‘You just don’t get it’ glares.

“But you said Karrin is here! Is- Is she- a g-ghost?” I stammered. Harry had come back from the dead. Karrin swore she’d seen his ghost. It was possible!

“No, Murphy’s not haunting me, or this place,” he sighed. “It’s just…. her essence is here, lots of my memories of her are from here, I feel-“ he swallowed hard and choked a bit, “closer to her here. And I sleep better here, especially after I’ve meditated on her. God, I can almost feel her.” He hung his head for a moment and I swear I saw the glimmer of a tear. After a long second he pointed towards the wall. “If you open the closet, her clothes are still there and they smell of her. Her shampoo is still in the bathroom and **that** smells of her too. I keep expecting to see her come through the door, to hear her say my name. When I sleep in this bed," he patted the mattress twice, "I remember what it felt like to have my arms around her. Then I don’t have the nightmares.”

“God, Harry,” I exclaimed, “Is this healthy? Mentally I mean.”

“Everybody needs sleep, Ken, after a couple of nights without sleep because I keep seeing her die in my arms I come here and remember what it was like to sleep with her there instead. Maybe it’s not the **best** practice, but for right now ... It’s getting me through.” Harry explained. His voice was sounding rough, like he was trying not to cry.

“How long are you going to keep this up, Harry?” I asked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Is anyone in the family needing this house right now?” Harry asked, rolling his head in a circle, loosening his shoulders.

“Well no,” I said, drawing out the words.

“Then as executor of the estate as long as I maintain the place and pay the taxes I can do as I please with it for the time being.” He said in what appeared to be a calm and reasonable tone. Control reasserted?

“But Harry, there’s no electricity, no heat.” I protested.

“The cold doesn’t bother me,” He replied. “And the gas and water are turned on. I’m paying the bills. I need someplace to stay until my place is put back together. It got pretty damaged that night.” Again, he choked a little on the last two words.

I leaned against the frame of the bedroom door, as if this was a perfectly reasonable time to be having a conversation with my sister’s ex- well, fiancé I guess. “What’s taking so long to get your place done?” I asked.

“Shortages. Personnel, materials, inspectors to give the go ahead for the next phase. Lots of building going on in Chicago now.” he stated calmly, but then he gritted his teeth. “We’ll show those so and so’s they can’t wipe out Chicago.” He hands which had been resting on his knees clamped into fists. His body had gone tense. I could see it in the cords of his neck as he gritted his teeth, the bulge of his biceps as his hands tensed. Then he took a breath.

“Ken, I don’t mean to seem rude, but you’ve broken into the house in the middle of the night and I’m tired. I haven’t slept well for 2 nights already. I really need a decent night’s sleep. And now it’s going to take me another hour to meditate back to the right level so that I can.” He sighed heavily. 

I could hear the fatigue in his voice now. His shoulders sagged again. He head hung forward, again. He shook out the fists his hands had become. He slung his legs over the side of the bed to stand. He put his naked feet on the unheated floor and walked toward me. “I’ll see you out.” there was insistence in his tone. He was gentle but firm when he took my elbow and turned me back toward the front door. I didn’t resist.

“Harry,” I asked, “before I go, tell me about you and Lara Raith. I’ve seen your pictures in the paper, heard the rumors of your engagement. If you’re still this hung up on Karrin…”

“It’s a PR thing,” Harry said interrupting me. “My boss thinks it looks good to her other allies. Lara and I have been friends for a long time, connected through Thomas. I may marry her. I’ll probably never love her, but … Well, it’s a political match, an arrangement. That’s all.”

“Harry, don’t do it. Karrin would want you to be happy.” I protested.

“Happy?" he snorted,"Without her?” An edge of raw grief, sharp as a knife, carried in his voice. "Maybe, in a hundred years of so, I can learn to be _content_. Happy?" He shook his head. "Now Ken, give me the key.” He held out his long, thin hand palm up. The look on his face said he would brook no argument.

I placed the key on his up turned hand and stepped out onto the porch.

“Good-night Ken,” he said and closed the door in my face.

I hung around outside the house peeking in at him. Something just didn’t sit right with me about this.

Harry went back to the bed. He got back into his original position and sat that way for quite a while, as my fingers and toes went numb. Why was I doing this? After a time his face relaxed again. Shortly after that happened, he held out his arms and wrapped them around…. nothing! It looked like he was holding someone in them but there was nothing there. He sighed so deeply that I could see it from the motions as I peeped in the window through a gap under the shade. He lay down, still as if he were holding someone in his arms. He used one arm to pull up the blankets and snuggled under them. There was no mound of another body but his arm seemed to float as if he **were** holding one. In a moment or two the candles flickered out. Since I could no longer see anything inside, I left.

I wonder if he slept without nightmares that night or if I’d upset his obviously delicate balance. 

It’s now our first Christmas without Mom or Karrin in our midst and I find myself missing Harry and Maggie too. I wonder if he’d like to drop by before New Year? There’s a small pile of presents still under the tree. Not for Karrin but for Maggie. I guess we Murphys lost more than we knew when Rudolph’s gun 'accidentally' went off that night.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm working out my grief through the pain of others.


End file.
